The good news about the Big Data market is that we generally all agree on the definition of Big Data, which has come to be known as data that has volume, velocity and variety where businesses need to collect, store, manage and analyze in order to derive business value or otherwise known as the "4 V's." However, the problem with such a broad definition is that it can mean different things to different people once you start to put some real values next to those V's.

Let's be honest, Volume can be a different thing to different organizations. To some it is anything above 10 terabytes of managed data in their BI environment and to others it is petabyte scale and nothing less. Likewise velocity can be multi-billions of daily records coming into the enterprise from various external and internal networks. When it really comes down to it, each business situation will be quite different not only from a size and speed perspective but also more important from the business use-case or requirement. A large bank's Big Data problem could be very different to that of an online retailer or an airline. If you compare what say a hospital is trying to do collecting and analyzing all the sensor patient data compared to a utilities provider running a smart-grid or a telecommunications operator. True, all could be categorized as machine generated or raw data but the exact type of data might be different not to mention the volume or growth rate. Probably the one unique common denominator across all aforementioned industries is that everyone is keeping the data for longer time-periods. No one is throwing it away - not even the detailed data.

The Many Cost Factors to ConsiderCosts will of course vary depending on the individual allocated IT budget but regardless, how the company allocates IT budget dollars to new Big Data initiatives needs consideration. Let's face it, enterprise buyers didn't suddenly come into a bunch of newfound IT assets or line items on their budget and the current world economic situation would certainly not suggest so. More likely existing budgets are being re-allocated and instead of spending more on say existing traditional data warehouses or appliances, monies are being allocated to new projects running on open source projects including Apache Hadoop which promises both low cost, ease of scale not to mention the obvious best approach to managing and analyzing multi-structured data sets. The difficultly then arises how do you integrate or have your Hadoop environment co-exist with the established BI or DW environment that the business has grown to love and rely upon?

Leverage What You Already HaveLet's assume you have a data warehouse or data mart in place today and you already use various ETL or data movement tools and BI dashboard, analytics or reporting tools and you don't want to disrupt business users which could not only impacting performance levels but also training up on a new set of tools. In fact you already likely beholden to strict SLA's around response times for the various business reports and KPI's. However, at the same time the business is demanding access to new data sets in order to glean better insights either directly analyzing this data or co-mingling it with existing customer data. This could take the form of web-logs, click stream data or social media data from various interactive sites the business is now leveraging and tracking. The promise of impacting profit margins and gaining a competitive edge just cannot be avoided.

As we all know, traditional relational or columnar databases can't handle the unstructured data types so IT needs to rollout a different solution to satisfy the business demands. Evaluations can take many forms but typically will start with which Hadoop distribution, which NoSQL or NewSQL database and what query access tools in addition to MapReduce. It is certainly no easy task as there are a large number of technology solutions on the market today that claim to run on or with Hadoop providing MapReduce or SQL-like capabilities which all satisfy the requirement of managing volumes of unstructured data. Some are more mature than others; some proven and not all are low-cost. Open source on the surface looks very low cost but as soon as you require any level of support, which lets face it once it's live and relied upon as a business critical environment, you will need to allocate a line item on your budget. The Big Data line item won't just be one line as it will need to include all components required to properly rollout a Big Data solution to truly satisfy the business demands. Just like any other IT environment the obvious pieces will include: Software licensing and support, hardware, skilled dedicated resources, professional services and training and the dedicated time of business users to provide input on key requirements including specifying types of reports, queries and analysis which will naturally change and evolve over time.

Big Data Costs Can Quickly Creep UpIn terms of the hardware expenditure required to manage the new Big Data set, you may start out with a Hadoop cluster of say 10 nodes and yes that is certainly manageable but if your data velocity is significant, you can quickly reach 100+ nodes and now you will face a number of other expenses including additional headcount and skilled resources to manage the environment proactively in addition to tools for managing the cluster including system management and alerting and potentially add-on software which can vary by business use-case but might cover real-time analytics against streaming data for say fraud detection or detection of unusual patterns. You may also need a business tool to provide a front-end GUI dashboard to track specific KPIs or data visualization tools so business users can quickly understand what is going on. Very quickly the costs become less about the storage and hardware and more around the software that focuses on getting the most value from this newly collected data set.

There is no denying the fact that Big Data presents great new opportunities but reaching the point of a quantifiable ROI in a fast time frame is still a very real challenge. Everyone is talking about Big Data and all the innovative technology approaches to tackling it but it is still difficult to find lots of business success stories within any one-industry sector. It's still fairly immature but the good news is that its moving at a much faster pace than any other IT project today and certainly our data warehouse and BI forefathers have provided lessons learned over the past two decades.

CIO, CTO & Developer Resources

Big Data Is Big Business but It Comes with Strict RequirementsIf we want to examine more closely the main areas of expenditure for a Big Data project, it is probably best to look at it through the lens of a specific type of business and use-case. Let's take a large financial institution that has a number of existing traditional data warehouse / BI environments but because the business doesn't want to throw any data away (well let's face it regulations don't allow that for a number of years) and realistically the business wants to retain specific data sets for ongoing trending and analysis. This includes examining questions such as "what constitutes a low-risk client based on spending behavior patterns over a specific time period cross-referenced with customer demographics" which will help the institution better target a particular segment of the market.

Given the IT budget doesn't allow for increased spend that correlates with data growth rates, they need to seriously reduce costs and so decide to go the route of a Hadoop-based environment given its promise for low-cost scale and the fact that it can provide insights into customer patterns by capturing semi- and unstructured data. Front-ending the warehouse with a dedicated Hadoop cluster is the preferred architectural approach but the business users still want access to both the Hadoop environment and the existing traditional data warehouse environment.

Given we are talking about a financial institution, the question of security and availability quickly come to the top of the requirements list. At the same time, if business users want to access that data, SQL query access and using the current BI tool against that new set of data is also a requirement. If you can avoid having to the move large chunks of data on a frequent basis from one to the other, it will not only reduce costs but also latency. In an ideal world, being able to leverage the skill sets you already have and avoiding duplication of work is key.

Below is a quick table outlining the main cost factors to be considered and a set of comments against each of these areas that could reduce costs.

Big Data on Hadoop Cost Factors

Key Consideration to drive down cost

Storage

Look at databases that provide data compression to yield storage savings (better than GZip or LZO).

Consider solutions where you don't need to retrain or hire all new resources. Leverage what you have (standard SQL-skilled DBAs)

Summary: Consider All Factors and Get Business Buy-in QuicklyBig Data is fundamentally a business problem. If you begin with the question of "what is the business trying to achieve by collecting, storing and analyzing this new set of data...", you will start down the right path to realizing business gains. Whether you outsource the initiative or bring in external consultants and vendors to manage the project, the same questions will arise and in order to leverage what you already have which includes both existing IT environments and skills, you will be better able to contain costs.

Furthermore, we all love the promise of new innovative technologies including Hadoop and MapReduce but without leveraging tried and tested standards we have come to love and respect, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense from both a technical or economic sense. As you start on your Big Data journey or project, be sure to ask what exactly the business requires and how can you leverage what you already have today. We all know, getting business user buy-in and success is half the battle to a successful rollout.

John Bantleman, CEO of RainStor, has more than 20 years’ experience in the management of software companies. Prior to overseeing RainStor, he transformed LBMS into a $45 million business prior to its successful NASDAQ flotation in 1997. Today’s LBMS’ technology is now part of CA’s product portfolio. The following year John was instrumental in the launch of Evolve, and drove the company through to a successful IPO on NASDAQ.

Returning to the UK in 2003, John spent 12 months working on the advisory boards of venture capital organizations such as Apax Partners. He joined RainStor Inc. as Chairman in 2004 and became CEO at the start of 2007 and relocated back to the US to head-up worldwide operations in 2009.

In accordance with our Comment Policy, we encourage comments that are on topic, relevant and to-the-point. We will remove comments that include profanity, personal attacks, racial slurs, threats of violence, or other inappropriate material that violates our Terms and Conditions, and will block users who make repeated violations. We ask all readers to expect diversity of opinion and to treat one another with dignity and respect.

Please wait while we process your request...

Your feedback has been submitted for approval.

Most Recent Comments

Vikas.Deolaliker09/21/12 06:49:00 PM EDT

Great article. Another data point, the IT budget is up only 4% in 2013 over 2012, so don't expect everyone to rush into Bigdata.

The fourth "V" is visualization. If you cannot render the analysis in a intuitive way, there is no value in that analysis. In fact, visualization should be the first step in design of a bigdata system - it helps trim down the architectural bloat into something that is within budget and useful.

Great piece John. Excellent detail. Thought you and your readers might be interested in where the "3Vs" of big data originated--in a Gartner piece I authored over 11 years ago. I recently unearthed a copy so folks to refer to and cite it.

For IoT to grow as quickly as analyst firms’ project, a lot is going to fall on developers to quickly bring applications to market. But the lack of a standard development platform threatens to slow growth and make application development more time consuming and costly, much like we’ve seen in the mobile space.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Mike Weiner, Product Manager of the Omega DevCloud with KORE Telematics Inc., discussed the evolving requirements for developers as IoT matures and conducted a live demonstration of how quickly application development can happen when the need to comply wit...

SYS-CON Events announced today that HPM Networks will exhibit at the 17th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on November 3–5, 2015, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
For 20 years, HPM Networks has been integrating technology solutions that solve complex business challenges. HPM Networks has designed solutions for both SMB and enterprise customers throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Internet of Everything (IoE) brings together people, process, data and things to make networked connections more relevant and valuable than ever before – transforming information into knowledge and knowledge into wisdom. IoE creates new capabilities, richer experiences, and unprecedented opportunities to improve business and government operations, decision making and mission support capabilities.

Explosive growth in connected devices. Enormous amounts of data for collection and analysis. Critical use of data for split-second decision making and actionable information. All three are factors in making the Internet of Things a reality. Yet, any one factor would have an IT organization pondering its infrastructure strategy.
How should your organization enhance its IT framework to enable an Internet of Things implementation? In his session at @ThingsExpo, James Kirkland, Red Hat's Chief Architect for the Internet of Things and Intelligent Systems, described how to revolutionize your archit...

MuleSoft has announced the findings of its 2015 Connectivity Benchmark Report on the adoption and business impact of APIs.
The findings suggest traditional businesses are quickly evolving into "composable enterprises" built out of hundreds of connected software services, applications and devices. Most are embracing the Internet of Things (IoT) and microservices technologies like Docker. A majority are integrating wearables, like smart watches, and more than half plan to generate revenue with APIs within the next year.

Growth hacking is common for startups to make unheard-of progress in building their business. Career Hacks can help Geek Girls and those who support them (yes, that's you too, Dad!) to excel in this typically male-dominated world.
Get ready to learn the facts:
Is there a bias against women in the tech / developer communities?
Why are women 50% of the workforce, but hold only 24% of the STEM or IT positions?
Some beginnings of what to do about it!
In her Opening Keynote at 16th Cloud Expo, Sandy Carter, IBM General Manager Cloud Ecosystem and Developers, and a Social Business Evangelist, d...

In his keynote at 16th Cloud Expo, Rodney Rogers, CEO of Virtustream, discussed the evolution of the company from inception to its recent acquisition by EMC – including personal insights, lessons learned (and some WTF moments) along the way. Learn how Virtustream’s unique approach of combining the economics and elasticity of the consumer cloud model with proper performance, application automation and security into a platform became a breakout success with enterprise customers and a natural fit for the EMC Federation.

The Internet of Things is not only adding billions of sensors and billions of terabytes to the Internet. It is also forcing a fundamental change in the way we envision Information Technology. For the first time, more data is being created by devices at the edge of the Internet rather than from centralized systems. What does this mean for today's IT professional?
In this Power Panel at @ThingsExpo, moderated by Conference Chair Roger Strukhoff, panelists addressed this very serious issue of profound change in the industry.

Discussions about cloud computing are evolving into discussions about enterprise IT in general. As enterprises increasingly migrate toward their own unique clouds, new issues such as the use of containers and microservices emerge to keep things interesting.
In this Power Panel at 16th Cloud Expo, moderated by Conference Chair Roger Strukhoff, panelists addressed the state of cloud computing today, and what enterprise IT professionals need to know about how the latest topics and trends affect their organization.

It is one thing to build single industrial IoT applications, but what will it take to build the Smart Cities and truly society-changing applications of the future? The technology won’t be the problem, it will be the number of parties that need to work together and be aligned in their motivation to succeed.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Jason Mondanaro, Director, Product Management at Metanga, discussed how you can plan to cooperate, partner, and form lasting all-star teams to change the world and it starts with business models and monetization strategies.

Converging digital disruptions is creating a major sea change - Cisco calls this the Internet of Everything (IoE). IoE is the network connection of People, Process, Data and Things, fueled by Cloud, Mobile, Social, Analytics and Security, and it represents a $19Trillion value-at-stake over the next 10 years.
In her keynote at @ThingsExpo, Manjula Talreja, VP of Cisco Consulting Services, discussed IoE and the enormous opportunities it provides to public and private firms alike. She will share what businesses must do to thrive in the IoE economy, citing examples from several industry sectors.

There will be 150 billion connected devices by 2020. New digital businesses have already disrupted value chains across every industry. APIs are at the center of the digital business. You need to understand what assets you have that can be exposed digitally, what their digital value chain is, and how to create an effective business model around that value chain to compete in this economy. No enterprise can be complacent and not engage in the digital economy. Learn how to be the disruptor and not the disruptee.

Akana has released Envision, an enhanced API analytics platform that helps enterprises mine critical insights across their digital eco-systems, understand their customers and partners and offer value-added personalized services.
“In today’s digital economy, data-driven insights are proving to be a key differentiator for businesses. Understanding the data that is being tunneled through their APIs and how it can be used to optimize their business and operations is of paramount importance,” said Alistair Farquharson, CTO of Akana.

Business as usual for IT is evolving into a "Make or Buy" decision on a service-by-service conversation with input from the LOBs. How does your organization move forward with cloud? In his general session at 16th Cloud Expo, Paul Maravei, Regional Sales Manager, Hybrid Cloud and Managed Services at Cisco, discusses how Cisco and its partners offer a market-leading portfolio and ecosystem of cloud infrastructure and application services that allow you to uniquely and securely combine cloud business applications and services across multiple cloud delivery models.

The enterprise market will drive IoT device adoption over the next five years.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, John Greenough, an analyst at BI Intelligence, division of Business Insider, analyzed how companies will adopt IoT products and the associated cost of adopting those products.
John Greenough is the lead analyst covering the Internet of Things for BI Intelligence- Business Insider’s paid research service. Numerous IoT companies have cited his analysis of the IoT. Prior to joining BI Intelligence, he worked analyzing bank technology for Corporate Insight and The Clearing House Payment...

"Optimal Design is a technology integration and product development firm that specializes in connecting devices to the cloud," stated Joe Wascow, Co-Founder & CMO of Optimal Design, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at @ThingsExpo, held June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City.

SYS-CON Events announced today that CommVault has been named “Bronze Sponsor” of SYS-CON's 17th International Cloud Expo®, which will take place on November 3–5, 2015, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. A singular vision – a belief in a better way to address current and future data management needs – guides CommVault in the development of Singular Information Management® solutions for high-performance data protection, universal availability and simplified management of data on complex storage networks. CommVault's exclusive single-platform architecture gives companies unp...

Electric Cloud and Arynga have announced a product integration partnership that will bring Continuous Delivery solutions to the automotive Internet-of-Things (IoT) market. The joint solution will help automotive manufacturers, OEMs and system integrators adopt DevOps automation and Continuous Delivery practices that reduce software build and release cycle times within the complex and specific parameters of embedded and IoT software systems.

"ciqada is a combined platform of hardware modules and server products that lets people take their existing devices or new devices and lets them be accessible over the Internet for their users," noted Geoff Engelstein of ciqada, a division of Mars International, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at @ThingsExpo, held June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City.

Internet of Things is moving from being a hype to a reality. Experts estimate that internet connected cars will grow to 152 million, while over 100 million internet connected wireless light bulbs and lamps will be operational by 2020. These and many other intriguing statistics highlight the importance of Internet powered devices and how market penetration is going to multiply many times over in the next few years.

The concept behind the Internet of Things has been around for a while now, ATMs being some of the first enterprise, hardened, network-connected, managed devices for mainstream consumer use. So too with our mobile phones, these are not new concepts to network technicians or hardware geeks. But for the rest of us, we simply never imagined the extents that the "ubiquity of connectedness" would take all other industries, from biotech to automotive, personal care to agriculture, entertainment to custom manufacturing. The list is as long as our imaginations.

Business and IT leaders today need better application delivery capabilities to support critical new innovation. But how often do you hear objections to improving application delivery like, "I can harden it against attack, but not on this timeline"; "I can make it better, but it will cost more"; "I can deliver faster, but not with these specs"; or "I can stay strong on cost control, but quality will suffer"? In the new application economy, these tradeoffs are no longer acceptable. Customers will abandon your brand forever for a slow response or a privacy breach; competitors will steal critical ...

Learn how the IoT Cloud will power the world of tomorrow and why managing IoT through the cloud is as important as cloud computing itself. Learn how the devices of tomorrow will work on business models that reflect a new business strategy and a way to consume services.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Ian Khan, Manager, Innovation & Marketing at Solgenia, will discuss how powered by the cloud and made possible by high tech manufacturing, sensors and devices with one way and even two way ability of control will devise a new IoT Cloud enabled world.

JavaScript is primarily a client-based dynamic scripting language most commonly used within web browsers as client-side scripts to interact with the user, browser, and communicate asynchronously to servers.
If you have been part of any web-based development, odds are you have worked with JavaScript in one form or another. In this article, I'll focus on the aspects of JavaScript that are relevant within the Node.js environment.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has quickly become the next “be all to end all” in information technology. Touted as how cloud computing will connect everyday things together, it is also feared as the real- life instantiation of The Terminator’s Skynet, where sentient robot team with an omnipresent and all-knowing entity that uses technology to control, and ultimately destroy, all of humanity.

We Need a Holistic Network Infrastructure: Why Controllers Are Not Cutting It
For years, we've relied too heavily on individual network functions or simplistic cloud controllers. However, they are no longer enough for today's modern cloud data center. Businesses need a comprehensive platform architecture in order to deliver a complete networking suite for IoT environment based on OpenStack.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Dhiraj Sehgal from PLUMgrid discussed what a holistic networking solution should really entail, and how to build a complete platform that is scalable, secure, agile and auto...

Digital Transformation is the process of updating your business and IT infrastructure to align with today's and tomorrow's consumers. Today that is important, but hard to do. Mobile consumer behaviors are changing far faster than most IT budgets and initiatives and that can cause problems. If your customers are adopting technologies and changing their path-to-purchase journeys at a pace that is faster than you can deliver, then you are opening up an opportunity gap for a more nimble competitor.

The multi-trillion economic opportunity around the "Internet of Things" (IoT) is emerging as the hottest topic for investors in 2015. As we connect the physical world with information technology, data from actions, processes and the environment can increase sales, improve efficiencies, automate daily activities and minimize risk.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Ed Maguire, Senior Analyst at CLSA Americas, will describe what is new and different about IoT, explore financial, technological and real-world impact across consumer and business use cases. Why now?
Significant corporate and venture...

Sensor-enabled things are becoming more commonplace, precursors to a larger and more complex framework that most consider the ultimate promise of the IoT: things connecting, interacting, sharing, storing, and over time perhaps learning and predicting based on habits, behaviors, location, preferences, purchases and more.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Tom Wesselman, Director of Communications Ecosystem Architecture at Plantronics, examineed the still nascent IoT as it is coalescing, including what it is today, what it might ultimately be, the role of wearable tech, and technology gaps still in...

What if, during a snow emergency, an on-the-ground sensor could automatically trigger a relevant emergency notification related to snowfall and road impact. And then, after it’s triggered, that notification is delivered intelligently to individuals based on an extensive set of rules designed to alert the most available and capable responders.
This “what if” question about “smart highways” is short-sighted. We are already there, and we are only getting started. While mainstream attention is paid to machine-to-machine communications, new technologies are being developed to make these communica...

WebRTC: together these advances have created a perfect storm of technologies that are disrupting and transforming classic communications models and ecosystems.
In his session at WebRTC Summit, Cary Bran, VP of Innovation and New Ventures at Plantronics and PLT Labs, will provide an overview of this technological shift, including associated business and consumer communications impacts, and opportunities it may enable, complement or entirely transform.

As organizations realize the scope of the Internet of Things, gaining key insights from Big Data, through the use of advanced analytics, becomes crucial. However, IoT also creates the need for petabyte scale storage of data from millions of devices. A new type of Storage is required which seamlessly integrates robust data analytics with massive scale. These storage systems will act as “smart systems” provide in-place analytics that speed discovery and enable businesses to quickly derive meaningful and actionable insights.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Paul Turner, Chief Marketing Officer at...

A recent purchase of mine was a 2015 Jeep. Until now, I thought it was a safe and reliable car, but that is not the case anymore. As technology advances and cars become smarter and more technologically savvy, they become another target for hackers.
Imagine speeding down the highway, zooming past 18-wheelers, SUVs and coupes, when all of a sudden, your brakes give out and your speed increases. Instantly, you think what could be wrong with the car, you pump your breaks and check your dash and there is no sign of stopping. Instant panic washes over you and a fear of dread drowns out the honkin...

In the consumer IoT, everything is new, and the IT world of bits and bytes holds sway.
But industrial and commercial realms encompass operational technology (OT) that has been around for 25 or 50 years.
This grittier, pre-IP, more hands-on world has much to gain from Industrial IoT (IIoT) applications and principles.
But adding sensors and wireless connectivity won't work in environments that demand unwavering reliability and performance.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Ron Sege, CEO of Echelon, discussed how as enterprise IT embraces other IoT-related technology trends, enterprises with in...

As much as I like to promote and evangelize mobile technologies and mobile commerce, it remains in its infancy.
My preliminary research reveals it is critical for a mobile retailer to know who is using a mobile application in order to maximize sales. This knowledge should then be used to present a customized mobile experience based upon the user's preferences and demographics. Even though consumers uniformly don't like the "idea" of vendors collecting data on them, they are happy to give it up in exchange for special treatment, discounts and deals as demonstrated by the high numbers of loy...

Cloud computing budgets worldwide are reaching into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and no organization can survive long without some sort of cloud migration strategy. Each month brings new announcements, use cases, and success stories.